HEASARC News: RXTE Cycle 13 Info/PCA Recipes

[heasarcnews@lists.nasa.gov]

Dear Colleagues,

This email provides information to RXTE users on three recent items;

1. RXTE CYCLE 13 PROGRAM SELECTED
2. RECIPES TO HANDLE PCA BREAKDOWNS
3. TIMING ERROR IN JANUARY 2006 RXTE DATA FIXED

These items are also highlighted in the Latest News box on the RXTE
homepage <http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/xtegof.html>.

1) The review of RXTE Cycle 13 Open Time Program proposals took place
in December 2008. An international panel of scientists convened to
discuss the 46 unique proposals that were submitted for consideration
this year. The proposals and targets that were recommended to NASA
Headquarters by the review panel are now available online
<http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/timeline/cycle13_targets.html>.

Note that Cycle 13 proposal numbers are distinguished by their leading
two digits: 94NNN. We remind proposers that no Guest Observer funding
is available for Cycle 13, so there will be no "Stage 2" review for
grants, and all data will be made public immediately (that is, no
proprietary period).  Also recall that Cycle 13 Core Program targets
can be found here
<http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/cycle13/core_program.html>.

2) We wish to call your attention to our recently posted procedures
for dealing with PCA breakdown events
<http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/recipes/pca_breakdown.html>.

3) Users of RXTE data should be aware of a one second timing error
that was recently fixed in archival data from 01-12 January 2006,
inclusive. Observations from that time range had an incorrect value
for the TIMEZERO keyword (incorrect value 2.37842941), which has now
been corrected to TIMEZERO=3.37842941.  RXTE users following standard
timing recipes with the old data would have experienced a one second
time offset error.  There are a number of pulsar observations in this
time range which would be most vulnerable to such an error.  All RXTE
users are advised to re-download the data from this time range from
the archive.  When using the corrected files, the offset error should
be resolved.  The problem was due to leap second transition issues in
2006, which were anticipated during the more recent transition in
2008-2009.

Again, information on all these issues can be found on the RXTE
homepage <http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/xtegof.html> (see
the Latest News box).

Regards,

Tod Strohmayer   (for the RXTE Guest Observer Facility)
--
A service of the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC)
NASA/GSFC

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